The Project Management Institute’s Project Management Professional (PMP)® accreditation is a professional qualification and the big difference between this and an academic degree is the need to maintain it. This is because the Project Management Institute realizes that what you study for in the PMP® exam will not remain the same as the profession advances. It is vital for project management practitioners to remain current.

On this page:

• Earning Professional Development Units (PDUs)
• The PMI Talent Triangle and PDU Categories
• Changes in Continuing Certification Requirements (CCR) Program

Earning Professional Development Units (PDUs)

To ensure this, anyone with PMP® certification must earn at least 60 Professional Development Units (PDUs) every three years. You can build these up by working as a project manager, attending events runs by the Project Management Institute’s chapters, giving talks at these events, volunteering your project management talents to a charity,  or by training activities, such as courses or self-directed learning (basically reading project management-related books).

The PMI Talent Triangle and PDU Categories

However, there are rules on how many PDUs you can claim under the various headings. The motivation behind these changes centres on what the Project Management Institute calls the “PMI Talent Triangle”. This files aspects of project management under three headings:

• Technical. We are familiar with this sort of PDU earning opportunity. Read a book on Earned Value Management or attend a talk on effective ways to use an Issue Log and you can claim PDUs as before.
• Leadership. The Project Management Institute has identified leadership as a key characteristic of Project Managers and wants us to develop that side of our profiles.
• Business and Strategic. Project managers who evolve into Program, or even Portfolio Managers will have to relate their work to the organization’s overall strategy. To be effective in such a role, a Program or Portfolio Manager needs to understand the industry s/he works in and where the organization needs to go to survive and thrive in such an environment.

Changes in Continuing Certification Requirements (CCR) Program

Cutting to the chase, how is this going to affect PMPs® in our pursuit of PDUs? Essentially, the only changes to the Continuing Certification Requirements (CCR) programme, as the PDU process is called, relate to Education and Giving Back to the Profession.

At least 60% of the PDUs you gather (35) must relate to education. However, we will need to clock up a minimum of eight PDUs in each of the Talent Triangle’s topics – i.e. technical, leadership and business/strategic.

There is bad news on the Giving Back to the Profession front: working as a Project Manager is now only worth 8 PDUs over a three-year cycle. Also, the maximum number of PDUs you can claim under this heading is 25 over three years. So this means 17 PDUs may be earned under the headings of volunteering and creating new knowledge.

Here at Velopi, this change has been welcomed as it should increase interest in our own PgMP^® exam preparation course. It should also boost demand for our one-day Strategy Management course and other 1 day courses.

If you have a specific learning need in Project Management; please contact Velopi to discuss further.